This week we return to coverage of the Mac. Gordon Smith joins us to talk all things machine virtualization. It is possible to run multiple operating systems on the Mac and switch between them. Come hear how this is done.

On the second hour of Main Menu Live we bring Gordon Smith on to talk to all of us about the Mac. We will ask him about the current state of applications running on the Mac and more questions on virtualization. You will also have an opportunity to call in and ask any questions pertaining to the Mac, Tiger, Voice Over and machine virtualization.

We will briefly discuss the brand-new ACB Radio Tuner released on May 1, 2007.

The number to call into the show is 866-400-5333. You can email your questions to mainmenu@acbradio.org. You can also interact with the show via MSN Messenger. The MSN Messenger ID to add is:

mainmenu@acbradio.org

Would you like to interact with a group of Main Menu listeners about the topics heard on Main Menu and Main Menu Live? You can do this by joining theMain Menu Friends email list. The address to subscribe is:

main-menu-subscribe@googlegroups.com

Come join an already lively group of users.

Would you like to subscribe to podcast feeds for Main Menu and Main Menu Live? The RSS feeds to add to your podcatching application are:

Main Menu and Main Menu Live can be heard on Tuesday evening at 9:00 Eastern, 6:00 Pacific, and at 1 universal on Wednesday morning on the ACB Radio Main Stream channel. To listen to the show, just click this link:

This is a good article that describes a little of what it is like to be blind, from the perspective of an actual blind couple

Fresno Bee, California USAMonday, April 30, 2007

Time to break the mold of paper money for the blind

By Eddie Jimenez

04/30/07 05:46:59

Ed and Toni Eames, both blind, each have their own systems to distinguish denominations of paper money once they've separated the bills.

Ed keeps dollar bills flat, folds $5 bills in half width-wise and $10 bills length-wise. Toni also leaves her dollar bills flat, but folds $5 bills in half twice width-wise and $10 bills in half, but keeps them in a different part of her purse.

They try not to carry around anything larger than $10. That makes it easier to keep track of their money.

The Fresno couple and other blind and visually impaired people will no longer have to go through this exercise if Pete Stark, a Democratic congressman from Fremont, has his way.

Stark wants all U.S. paper money to be redesigned to meet a federal court ruling last November that said our nation's currency — being all the same size and indistinguishable — violates the civil rights of the blind.

A judge told the Treasury Department to fix the problem, but the agency is appealing the ruling. Treasury officials say changing U.S. paper money would be costly.

Undeterred, Stark has suggested a less expensive remedy — cutting off the edges of bills, for example, trimming the four corners of the $1 bill, three corners of the $2 and so on.

That doesn't seem too practical, but one way or another, a change should be made so the blind can tell the difference between denominations of paper currency. As one news report said, about 180 other countries have different sizes for paper money.

The Eameses understand that the switch would be costly and realize there are other pressing issues for the blind, such as education, transportation, learning Braille and getting easier access to Web sites.

Still, being able to distinguish paper money would eliminate one dependency on others.

The couple offered examples of how the blind are overlooked in everyday dealings that sighted people take for granted.

Listening to a Channel 18 fundraiser, the Eameses kept hearing "Call the number on your screen," but the number was never read aloud.

So they had to phone a friend for the number before they could contribute.

They're also not able to use all the functions on their cell phone because it's about "50% blind friendly." And their search for a new stove was hampered because most oven functions are digital. They need a stove with knobs to distinguish temperatures.

"Change doesn't always include the blind population," said Ed, who is the chairman of the Fresno Americans with Disabilities Act Advisory Council. This can add to life's challenges.

The ACB Radio Web team among a number of others have been working hard on a brand-new version of the ACB Radio Tuner. With the launch of the ACB Radio World stream, we have released the new ACB Radio Tuner. Here is what is new in this release:

This version only supports Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003 and Windows VISTA. The older version will remain available for older client desktops such as Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME and Windows NT Version 4.0.

Addition of the ACB Radio World stream reachable by pressing CTRL+D.

Addition of several new hotkeys.

Windows Media Player hotkey changed to CTRL+E.

Settings are saved in a custom INI file (ACB Radio Tuner.ini) to eliminate Windows registry writes. The file is placed in the user's Application Data folder in a directory called "ACB Radio Tuner". This insures that the program will operate under VISTA.

Improved, cleaner visual user interface.

The "No Extra Speech" setting is now saved if selected so that future sessions do not check for the availability of a screen reader.

We have great plans for the future of the Tuner and you will start to see more frequent updates as we begin to implement those features.

I want to sincerely thank the following individuals for their contributions in making this version a tremendous success:

Darren Paskell – for giving us the source code of the original from which to build from. He rocks!

Darrell Shandrow – for putting up with buggy versions and for assisting in writing the documentation.

Matthew Horspool – for assistance with documentation updates and for developing the ACB Radio Tuner tutorial (to be released soon).

Tina Ektermanis – for digging out her dusty Windows 98 box, blowing the dirt out of the fans, finding its old power cord and getting that crusty harddrive to boot to test the new version on that platform. Shucks, and all to find out it doesn't work. Thanks Tina for the hard work late in to the night.

Chrissie and Marlaina – for giving us the support we needed to get this done and for always being there.

Main Menu Friends Group users – without their help, this never would have been a success. There are far to many to list here, but thanks gang!

This is to announce the imminent birth of a new station, ACB Radio World.

This brand new station will concentrate on programming in languages other than English, although English programs will be carried, as well as focusing on music from all parts of the world.

The station will commence programming on 7 May at 06:00 UTC with a live stream from the Africa Forum, hosted by the Institutional Development Program and the Perkins School for the Blind. The Forum is being held in Nairobi Kenya, and focuses on continued action of the African Decade of the Disabled to breakdown barriers towards social inclusion and the creation of opportunities for blind and visually impaired citizens of Africa. Concerning the Forum itself, I will be posting more details of speakers etc., as and when I receive the full agenda.

The new ACB Radio World stream can be reached from the ACB Radio homepage, acbradio.org and will cater for both broadband and modem users.

ACB Radio World can also be found on the new and improved ACB Radio Tuner. Watch for details of that coming very soon.

If you are a speaker of a language other than English and fancy yourself broadcasting to the world, then we'd very much like to hear from you. Please write to support@acbradio.org.

I genuinely hope that ACB Radio World will be a catalyst for the bringing together of the world's blind community, and I look forward to working with blind people from every part of this planet of ours.

This is absolutely huge! Jeff Bishop reports that Serotek has opened the doors of employment wide by introducing the ability for a blind person to easily gain remote access to another person’s computer without need of that person having any installed assistive technology! This means that many private industry jobs may be opened up to the blind in the very near future. The functionality this technology provides is equivalent to GoToAssist, Microsoft’s Remote Assistance and similar products and services already enjoyed by the sighted! Please read RIM and RAM – opening more doors for professionals and get ready for a revolution in remote accessibility!

I’ll have much more to say about Serotek’s new remote access technology in the next week or so. Please stay tuned!

Therese Fredette receives her utility bill and her bank statement in Braille, the system of raised letters she reads with her fingers.

At many restaurants, she can order from menus written in Braille.

But the North Syracuse woman, blind since birth, could not read her annual 12-page recertification letter from Medicaid, the state's major health program for the blind and disabled, because it came in standard print.

She asked the Onondaga County Department of Social Services, which administers Medicaid locally, to send her the letter in Braille. County officials refused, but offered to have someone read the letter to her over the phone or in person. That proposal didn't sit well with Fredette, who likes to do things for herself.

"The less people help me, the better," Fredette said. "I believe my mail and everything is private."

She turned for help to the Disability Rights Clinic at Syracuse University's College of Law. Law students Koert Wehberg and Carrie Auringer worked out a compromise on Fredette's behalf with the state Health Department, which oversees Medicaid.

While state officials rejected the request for Braille, they recently agreed to provide the information to Fredette on an audiocassette. Wehberg and Auringer said it took them 18 months to

cut through the government bureaucracy to get Fredette the accommodation she is entitled to under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act.

"We find it ironic that private businesses such as banks and National Grid provide people with information in Braille, but our own government, where we pay taxes, does not provide people with accessible information so they can be independent," said Wehberg, who also is blind.

Wehbergand Auringer consider Medicaid's agreement to accommodate Fredette a victory for visually impaired people. They said it is important for people with disabilities to know they can ask for accommodations from the county Department of Social Services and the state Health Department, the two agencies that run Medicaid.

Zach Karmen, Onondaga County's chief welfare attorney, said the county Department of Social Services often receives requests to accommodate people with physical and mental disabilities or limited language proficiency.

"Ideally what we like is for the case worker to make the accommodation right on the fly," he said. "They just use common sense."

Karmen said Fredette's case was the first time the department received a request for Braille correspondence. He said the county could not provide the information in Braille because the Medicaid letters are sent directly by the state.

After the law students negotiated the compromise with the state, the county made the recording by taping one of its employees reading Fredette's letter aloud, according to Karmen.

"To be honest, that didn't make too much sense to me," he said. "I thought it would make much more sense to have someone read it to her and help her fill out the form."

That was unacceptable because it would not let Fredette review the information more than once to make sure she understood it, the same way a sighted person would when reading and rereading a printed letter, Wehberg said. It also would have compromised her privacy, he said.

The state Health Department was contacted by the law students in November and resolved the case in three months, according to Claire Pospisil, a department spokeswoman.

She said the request should have been resolved at the county level.

Wehberg said a Health Department official told him the agency did not want to provide Fredette her recertification letter in Braille because it would set a precedent.

The Americanswith Disabilities Act says that as long as the accommodation is considered reasonable, it does not have to be exactly what the individual requested, according to Pospisil. Under the law, an audio recording is considered a reasonable accommodation. "She was offered and accepted the accommodation of an audiocassette of the recertification letter's contents," she said.

The Health Department may have opted for an audiocassette instead of Braille because the cassette is accessible not only to Fredette, but to anyone else she may want to share the information with, such as an attorney, Pospisil said.

About 10 million Americans are totally or partially blind. In Central New York, there are more than 5,800, according to an estimate by Aurora of Central New York, an agency that serves people with hearing and vision loss.

Federal disability laws such as the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act require that blind and visually impaired individuals receive communications in an alternative format.

Many privatecompanies accommodate the blind because they understand it's not only a legal obligation, but good business, said Silvia Yee, a staff attorney with the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund, a national civil rights and policy group.

Government agencies, however, often are slow to abide by these laws, Yee said. Her organization is representing some blind Social Security Administration beneficiaries suing the federal agency for not providing them with alternatives to standard print.

"If you cannot communicate with the agency or the agency refuses to communicate with you in a way you can understand, you are denied participation," Yee said. "These bureaucracies have a lot of inertia to overcome in thinking of systemwide solutions and creative changes."

Persistent individuals like Fredette who file complaints are sometimes successful in getting accommodations, according to Yee.

"But it's very hard to get systemic change so that all people with visual disabilities, including seniors who need large fonts, are able to get the communication they need to effectively participate in the system."

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Blind pedestrians have been victims in two recent accidents in the Clifton neighborhood, where the Kentucky School for The Blind is located. The people hit were doing nothing wrong, even though they could not see where they were going.

After the accident in March, Newchannel 32 anchor John Boel investigated.

While law mandates drivers "shall stop and give the right of way at any intersection to blind pedestrians" the hidden camera investigation found drivers seldom do. Even a police officer failed to follow the law.

In one tape, at the same intersection where a blind man was seriously injured last month, a blind woman waited for the walk signal. The moment the light turned green, a car coming the other way jumps the light to make a left turn without waiting just as the woman receives the audio command to cross. The left-turning car misses her by inches and if she had started walking on her cue, she would have been hit.

The neighborhood around the Kentucky School for The Blind is loaded with signs reading "No Turn On Red When Pedestrians Are Present" because that's how the blind are often hit.

But over and over, Boel recorded people disregarding the signs and turning with or without noticing blind pedestrians right there.

"I think the right turn on red is a problem," Kentucky School For The Blind mobility teacher Mary Pawlowski said. "Speeding is a big problem. Parking lots, I would say, is the most dangerous."

Teachers at the school also said drivers should wait longer than they might think it should take them to cross, and not to honk or talk to them because the noise or instructions might divert them from practicing what they've learned.

Listen to The Desert Skies tonight,Jeff will be playing the tunes passed midnight,He wil start at 7 o'clockAnd the music will rock.

The desert Skies can be heard from 0 to 5 UTC,And on Interactive,Is where, he will be.

Saturday, April Twenty-eight Won't it be great?His show will be extended and be 6 hours long.

Come join us, he will play your favorite songs,Whatever you choose,As well as Techie News,Give you the Impossible Question to make you think,So no need for winksDo not take a nap,Bring your thinking cap,You all will have a great time.

Win a Smartphone with a license of Code Factory's world-class screen reader!

Code Factory welcomes everyone to join our new competition! Participate for a chance to win a Windows Mobile-powered Smartphone, licenses for any Windows Mobile screen reader from Code Factory, and more!

This competition is a real challenge of team creativity! Ask two of your blind or visually impaired friends to join you, and together, create the best ringtone!!!

Each winner can choose to get a free license for either of the following:

Mobile Speak for Windows Mobile SmartPhones, the very first screen reader officially tested on and supporting over 40 SmartPhones running Windows Mobile Standard 5.0 and 6.0. First released last September 2006 and already with support for around 20 different languages and variants, over 15 Braille devices and several third-party applications through a powerful scripting language, Mobile Speak for Windows Mobile Smartphones does not only make a true claim to be the first, but has also made a respected name in just a few months as a world-class screen reader with satisfied users across different continents.

Mobile Speak for Pocket PC Phones and PDAs, the most powerful full-fledged screen reader compatible with Windows Mobile Professional and Classic, and officially tested to work on versions 2003 Second Edition, 5.0 and 6.0 found on more than a hundred devices. This innovative screen reader is the only one to give the blind and visually impaired true access to a Pocket PC even using the touch screen, and comes with a plug-in for the only screen magnifier for the Windows Mobile Pocket PC platform. Also available with several text-to-speech engines for different languages, support for various Braille input and output devices, and numerous third-party applications using the LUA scripting language, this screen reader is known and loved by the blind and visually impaired worldwide.

But why just read about these amazing access solutions for Windows Mobile devices when you can be a proud user like many others? Tell your friends about our new Team Creativity competition and join to win!

It seems that some of the blank virtual buffer issues continue after the update to JAWS 8.00.2107, at least in Outlook Express. Consistent with previous experience, I just observed a short e-mail message in Outlook Express that JAWS was unable to render. It was necessary to read the message using the JAWS cursor. At minimum, these issues are incredibly annoying. If they’re still happening on web sites, well, they represent a potentially significant loss of productivity on the job! Come on, Freedom Scientific, please, let’s run down and resolve these virtual buffer issues!